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Syntax Issue 10
Denver Syntax
{the fur}
  matt roberts



Going to church every Sunday
as a little child I would
play with my brother, then lean
against my mother’s side and
drift off. In the colder months
mum would wear grandmother’s
expensive, ancient fur coat.
She was so warm and I would
smell her perfume in my dreams.

Now she’s gone and I am a man in the
same small town I grew up in.
I shoot animals in the head, in the hills.
Put my hands on them and stroke
the fur until the body goes cold.